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Tuesday, January 31, 2017

There's nothing new about overnight oats!! Soak your porridge overnight and they're nice and creamy in the morning and more digestion friendly. Right!! My friend's mom has been religiously soaking her porridge in water overnight since I was a child. So what's changed???!!

Well for one thing Instagram/Pinterest happened. All of a sudden we are seeing porridge becoming increasingly trendy, with an explosion of photos of beautiful looking overnight oats, with all sorts of fruits, seeds, exotic powders etc. Healthy eating has never been more popular especially online. When I do a search of '#overnightoats' on Instagram's public posts there are more than 318,000 post.

So basically what are these new pimped up overnight oats?? Well, there is no one recipe. You can make them with what ever combination you like. The possibilities are endless. Here's a nice and fragrant one though that I like to make, It has a tropical and fruit vibe. It has chia seeds and pumpkin seeds that will super charge your body first thing in the morning. They are a great healthy make ahead breakfast, that is also very portable. The thought of a ready made tasty breakfast already made in the fridge, might make getting out of a warm cozy bed that much easier.

Ingredients

50g of porridge oats

50ml of water

1 tbsp of chia seeds

1 tbsp of dessicated coconut

1/2 a fresh mango, cubed

2 tbsp of frozen raspberries

1 tbsp of pumpkin seeds

Method

Place the oats in a jar or deep glass, add the water.

Top with the chia seeds and coconut

Top then with the mango, raspberries and pumpkin seeds.

Cover and allow to sit in the fridge overnight.

I like to serve mine with a spoon of Greek yogurt, honey, and milled chia seeds.

Monday, January 30, 2017

When you are up against it, stir fries are a great speedy dinner option, not to mention healthy. Here's the fastest stir fry I've made in ages and tastiest. The sweetness of the mango with the prawns works so well, along with the spicy red curry paste.

Ingredients

100g raw prawns

1/2 a fresh mango cubed

3 mushrooms, sliced

1/2 red onion. thinly sliced

1 lime, quartered

10-15 fine green beans

1 tsp red curry paste

1 garlic clove, diced

1cm piece of ginger, diced

3 tbsp of coconut milk

1 tbsp of coconut oil

1 tsp of fish sauce

1 tsp of soy sauce

Rice to serve

Method

Put a wok on high heat, and heat the coconut oil. Fry off the onions, garlic, & ginger. Add the red curry paste, and cook it out for a minute or so.

Add the mushrooms and the prawns. Cook until the prawn turn pink.

Add the mango cubes and the coconut milk and bring to a gentle simmer.

To thicken the sauce, pour a tbsp of water into a container with a tsp of cornflour and stir to make a loose paste. Add to the gently simmering sauce and it should thicken.

Finally add the green beans to warm through, but they still retain their colour. To taste add the fish sauce and the soy sauce.

For freshness and zing, serve with a wedge of lime and some brown rice.

Friday, January 27, 2017

I love protein balls, they seem to be the on-trend thing to eat at the moment, up there with avocado!! My kids adore the balls I make for them, most of the time consisting of dates, almonds, and a nut butter.

I recieved a healthy eating newsletter from their day care centre today and there was quite a long list of banned foods for safety, and to promote healthy eating. I realised that I couldn't send their normal protein balls in their lunch boxes as nuts are banned in the centre, for understandable allergy reasons. So today I set about making the balls using maple syrup as the core binding ingredient, and milled chia seeds and sesame seeds in place of my usual nuts.

I'm sure it's easy enough to chop and change ingredients according to availability and preferences. For example tahini paste could be used in place of the usual nut butter. or maple syrup Anyway, these protein balls went down a treat. There was a spoon of cacao powder (which hopefully isn't frowned upon in the centre). This powder was gifted to me my a very dear friend when he came to stay with us during the summer. This is a highly prized powder from a chocolatier, Hazel Mountain Chocolate the Burren in Co Clare, so I use it very sparingly. It's chocolate in it's purest unrefined form.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

This recipe is adapted from my Moroccan Lamb Tagine recipe from the archives. A recipe which I've mentioned before won a place in Rachel Allen's Kerrygold Community E-recipe book. A recipe I am very proud of. I came up with this recipe as I was planning a dinner party, and wanted a chilled out casual style party. You know, with mezze and pick n'mix style spread. I immediately thought of my lamb tagine, which is even better when made in advance. However my mother detests lamb. So that ruled lamb out, but not a tagine! There was an epic beef and prune stew on Rick Stein's French Oddessy recently on the UKTV Food channel, so I thought why not substitute the lamb for beef and the apricots for prunes. I did, and it worked beautifully. It was a really fragrant, spicy rich dish, and I added pomegranate seeds for freshness. It was I must say divine. I just added a simply cous cous, flatbreads, and yogurt and it turned into the heartiest meal we have eaten in ages.

Ingredients

2 lbs diced beef

2 tbsp ground cumin

2 tbsp ground coriander

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tbsp turmeric

2 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp of maldon sea salt

1 tbsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground Cinnamon

4 minced garlic cloves

one diced onion

1 tin chopped tomatoes

4 carrots thickly sliced on diagonal

4 tbsp of prunes

2 tbsp runny honey

50g flaked almonds

100g cous cous

50g raisins

1 tin of drained chickpeas

seeds of 1 pomegranate

1 tbsp Kerrygold butter

Generous handful chopped flat leaf parsley

1 tsp of olive oil

pinch sugar

1 tsp tomato paste

1 250g tub Greek yogurt (to serve)

4 mini pitta breads (to serve)

lemon wedges (to serve)

Method

1. Combine all the spices, garlic and onion and rub into the meat2. Leave to marinate, preferably overnight, although an hour should be sufficient.. In a lidded oven proof casserole dish, add the butter and olive oil on a medium heat.3. Brown the meat, in batches if necessary.4. Add all the meat back into the casserole dish, adding the carrots, tinned tomatoes, sugar, and tomato paste, salt and pepper.5. Bring up to the boil and put lid on the dish and put in a preheated oven for 1.5 hours at 180 degrees.6. Meanwhile, put cous cous in a bowl, add butter, rind of lemon, season with salt and pepper and pour over 150 mls of boiling water and cover for ten mins.7. Fluff with a fork, adding half the chopped parsley, chickpeas, half the pomegranate seeds and the raisins.8. Put prunes in a jug of boiling water and leave for 5-10 mins for them to re-hydrate a little and get nice and juicy, then cut in half.9. Put the flaked almonds on a baking tray and toast in the oven, keeping an eye on them as they can burn in matter of seconds.10. Remove the casserole dish from the oven and add the prunes and almonds and runny honey.11. Return the dish (uncovered) to the oven for a final 20 mins to brown.12. Put the pittas in the oven to warm through.13. Remove the dish from the oven and present to the table in the dish adding the chopped coriander.

14. Put the cous cous, yogurt and pittas in bowls on the table and let your guests help themselves, Moroccan style! Enjoy.

(sorry for the poor quality photos, a child feel ill, and we got distracted and never ended up photographing the food/spread. But, shur, another reason to do it all again.)

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Happy New Year everyone! New year, new resolutions. My new years resolutions is to blog more. Since the arrival of my second baby, I've found myself sometimes a bit swamped with looking after the kids, and running the B&B. The blog was falling further and further down the priority list. I don't want that to happen this year. I hope to blog way more than the last two years. So new year, new promises.

First post of the new year has to be a healthy one. I thought this recipe for pineapple rice would be a tasty choice. I discovered pineapple rice whilst backpacking in Thailand and myself and Alan became absolutely obsessed with it. There was this one place on Koh Samui Island called Eat Sense, that, hands down, has the best pineapple rice I've ever tasted. There is a place here in Killarney called Khao that actually do a nice Pineapple Rice. But my aim with this recipe is to use turkey mince in place of the pork and make this recipe healthier. But not only healthier, faster too, using microwave rice and spice purees. This really is something you can whizz up mid week after a day at the office, and have yummy leftovers for the following days lunch too.

Ingredients

1 pineapple

1 microwave rice pouch

400g turkey mince

1/2 a green pepper, diced

3 spring onions, diced

2 tbsp of chopped coriander

2 tbsp of raw cashew nuts

1 egg

Pinch of salt & pepper

2 diced mushrooms

1 tsp of thai red curry paste

1 tsp of puree garlic

1 tsp of puree ginger

1 tsp of puree lemongrass

1 tsp of chilli paste

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp of coconut oil

Method

Firstly half the pineapple and scoop out the flesh using a spoon. Chop up the flesh into cube size pieces.

With a wok on a medium heat, add the oil and cook off the turkey mince.

When the mince is browned off, add the garlic, ginger, chilli, lemongrass, curry paste, salt and pepper and mix through.

Add the mushrooms, pineapple pieces, and green pepper and stir fry.

Break up the rice and add to the wok. Stir fry well to incorporate.

Add the cashew nuts, spring onions, and coriander.

Tilt the wok to one side, with the rice mixture to the other side

Break in the egg and slightly scramble it, before incorporating the egg into the whole rice mixture.

Finish with a dash of soy sauce and spoon the rice into the hollowed out pineapple halves.

The filling would feed 4 servings, add another pineapple (reserving the flesh of the second pineapple for something else) to feed four people.

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About Me

My name is Serena and i'm a self confessed food addict!! I'm a wife, a mom to a young toddler, and a bed and breakfast owner in Killarney in South West Ireland. I get a kick out of cooking for loved ones and in my job I get to cook for different people from all over the world on a daily basis. I am constantly experimenting and my guilty pleasure is reading cook books in bed.
I'm quite health and low fat conscious most of the time. I do believe if you are healthy 80% of the time, the rest of the time is reserved for treats. Afterall life is too short not to enjoy cake! This is reflected in my recipes which are mostly low fat, but there are a few naughty tasty recipes also.
I was a fussy eater as a young lass, using ketchup to disguise the taste of food, still today I use ketchup like its going out of fashion, though always just in the privacy of my own home.I promise to leave the ketchup at home in these recipes :)